Bones or Mo' Bones Day

 Yes, I appropriated the title from the latest internet sensation.  Parody is fair use, after all.  Anyway, a few weeks ago, I wrote a post about some of the Halloween decorations I saw on my way to work.  Well, since then, a few more decorations have been put up.  Many of them revolve around skeletons.  Quite a few of them in fact.  For instance, the home which had the heads placed on pikes have since moved them to a different location.  In front of the pikes is a skeleton with a helmet, sword and shield.  Something out of the old Jason and the Argonauts movie.  Unfortunately, one of the heads has since vanished and one of the pikes have fallen over.  At least they still have a giant inflatable red-winged bat.  Another house has put back up their dragon skeletons.  Two dragons, one much larger than the other, stand in front of their home.  I can't be entirely sure, but they may have either added some lights to the bones or painted the horns and claws to make them stand out more.  At least they don't have the Santa hats they used for Christmas still on them.  Hey, those things are probably expensive.  Why not repurpose them for other holidays.  Even the city of Prestonsburg has a small skeletal dragon for an official town display.  This doesn't include the tattoo parlor with the skeletons and fake graveyard in front of their business.  At least they go very well with the sarcophagus they keep outside the door.  Another place has not one or two, but four skeletons out in a display.  A skeleton dog is 'barking' at two human skeletons sitting on a bench, along with a life-size horse skeleton standing nearby.  Oh, did I forget to mention the place is a stable?  Not sure if the horse is appropriate for a stable, but if it works.  The stable has about six or seven horses; I'm not sure exactly how many. Recently, two ponies have also been there.  Or at least visiting the corral.  A few times, I even saw a baby donkey there.  It's mother too, but this was years ago.  The weirdest skeletal sight might be the small dinosaur outside a business just outside downtown Pikeville.  Maybe I house.  I was focused on driving, so I can't remember where I saw the thing.  Now, a small skeleton is great for Halloween, but a dinosaur?  And I'm talking about a fairly good replica.  I used to be an amateur paleontologist so I can recognize such things.  Now, I couldn't tell if it was a T-rex or just a generic bipedal beast, but I think it had sharp teeth.  Still, dinosaurs are not appropriate for Halloween, even if they are skeletons.  Maybe they had a model for some reason and repurposed it.  Cheaper, if weird.

Savor the Flavor for Later

 The latest round of the soda wars kicked off again last month with Pepsi's release of the first of its limited edition "Soda Shop" offerings, flavored with real sugar.  Now, I'm the type of person who will try any new flavor of soda, even the occasion trial of Coke.  I waited until individual bottles were available, since I didn't want to buy an entire carton of something that I might not like.  Fortunately, I only had to wait a week or so before I could try the new flavors.  First off, there is Black Cherry Pepsi.  Now, Pepsi has a wild cherry flavor already.  (They also had a cherry-vanilla flavor for awhile.  I haven't seen it anywhere for awhile.  Maybe not even on its website.  A shame really, since a slightly liked it.) The soda has a slight dark red coloration to it.  It doesn't smell much like cherries though.  The first sip was strong.  A bitter/sour cherry flavor similar to medicinal flavorings.  The sweetness is undercut, barely registering after the first taste.  Further sips just strengthened the medicine comparison.  Even after the ice diluted the drink, the connection to medicine remains.  While the flavor isn't that bad, it is very strong and some people will suffer from negative associations.  Definitely an acquired taste.  Second, there is the Cream Soda Pepsi flavor.  For all of those readers not familiar with cream soda, it is a strong vanilla flavor.  Pepsi also had a vanilla variety already, although I haven't seen it around too often.  Dr. Pepper made headlines last year when it introduced its cream soda variant, so it seems that Pepsi was following suit with this flavor.  My first impression was with the strong vanilla aroma.  It was hard to miss.  The first sip had a very pronounced vanilla flavor, as did the next few sips.  However, the sweetness began to overtake the vanilla, leaving just a sugary taste.  Even diluted with melting ice, the sugar was the dominant flavoring.  The initial vanilla quickly fades.  While there is some vanilla aftertaste, one has to fight to find it once you drink some.  For comparison's sake, Dr. Pepper's cream soda has a steady vanilla flavor mixed with the soda's usual flavor.  In fact, the same goes for Dr. Pepper's cherry version as well.  The cherry flavor is nowhere near Pepsi's medicinal black cherry.  I will admit, I am a huge Dr. Pepper fan, so it can be hard to impress me with other brands.  Overall, I find Pepsi a little too sweet in most of its versions; the cream soda of these two new flavors more so than average.  I'm just glad I didn't buy a carton of either version. While this experiment was a great one-off, I don't think I will try another bottle of either flavor.

Scare Me up Something Original

 It is Halloween time again, and this means that people are putting up decorations.  For myself, this is limited to mostly the same old things at my store, Booknotes.  For twenty-one years now, I have been setting up many of the same things, with a few new items, or at least some tweaks here and there.  To be honest, much of it is more autumnal than Halloween, but it all comes together.  What is amazing is what other people have done.  Just on my way to work everyday, I see a wide range of decorating that simply boggles my mind.  For instance, just up the street from me, a house put up one display featuring a Frankenstein monster and a witch on sticks, only to replace it with a 'snow-globe' inflatable on a graveyard scene, with bats and/or ghosts swirling around inside.  The former decorations were moved to the shed.  The town of Wheelwright replaced the autumn harvest bench scene with their own set of inflatables, including a zombie rising from the ground, a giant black cat with a bobbing head, a grim reaper, and a giant spider along with rope 'webbing,' with a tiny skeleton caught within.  Speaking of skeletons, another house has a skeleton climbing a pole after being chased by a skeletal dog, just slightly over pug-size.  There is a second tiny skeleton hanging from near the top of the pole, and it is wearing sunglasses.  The same house has a trio of miniature creepy clowns that they move about every few days to add to the scare factor.  One place has a fabric ghost tied to a tree, but has three heads stuck on poles beside of it.  One head has an arrow sticking from it.  However, the one place that has gone to the most trouble is the same one I have mentioned before.  They set up mannequins for many holidays, with Halloween being the biggest.  This is the home that had a naughty zombie pilgrim scarecrow last Thanksgiving and a tableau of Trump and Biden this past Independence Day.  So far, because they are prone to adding more and more, they have almost a dozens figures around their yard.  A regular scarecrow recently fell down and has yet to be uprighted.  There is a masked serial killer in the remains of the garden.  A demonic nun watches by the road.  A partially dismembered figure lies atop an open cage.  Two fortune-tellers dressed in stereotypical garb (you know what a mean, but I won't use the now culturally inappropriate term as it is considered offensive) sit and stand by a table with a crystal ball featuring a skull inside of it.  Some clowns hand menacingly from a swing set, less than full size.  The main feature lies by the steps of the house.  There, you have Beetlejuice as well as Cousin Itt from The Addams Family.  I'm not sure how the hair was made, but I don't think it is actually hair, but it is hard to tell from a distance.  Meanwhile, my store has two bunnies with bat masks and some orange ribbons on.  Oh, and a small blue brain stress toy hidden about.  Yeah, I need to up my game if the store is open next year.

Shoppe Senses Tingling

 I have a quite unusual set of skills, just not in the Liam Neeson action-movie way.  None of them are spectacular or flashy, really, but they do have their uses.  For instance, I have an uncanny "shop-sense."  Put me into a store or mall of some kind, and I can usually find exactly what I want or where it is supposed to be located if it's not there.  It's amazing at what I can find.  Getting the right size, or finding a sale or clearance item, frequently happens to me.  (This sense used to extend to libraries and school campuses, but it has been so long since I've been to new ones, I'm not sure if that skill hasn't waned or not over time.) It doesn't matter if it is a store I've been to dozens of times, a different location for a chain, or a brand new place, I can orient myself to its layout and adjust as necessary.  Note, I said 'usually.'  Recently, the local Walmart has started a major remodel.  Even though I go there at least once a week, recent trips have left me in a daze with all of the drastic changes taking place, even in sections that I rarely go into. I have even wound up barely getting anything, but that might be more due to supply issues than anything else, but I digress.  For instance, the toy department was moved to where the gardening center used to be.  I'm guessing most of those products were taken outside or just not replaced for the moment.  Books and magazines were taken from the front to where the toys were, with about a thirty percent reduction in the former and another forty percent or so reduction in the latter.  This might be a temporary reduction until the changes are completed, but, if not, then that means that magazines have gone down to about a quarter of what they were just two years ago.  School and office supplies have also been moved to fill this section, as well as crafts/fabric.  For a few weeks anyway.  Crafts were moved back to almost exactly where they once were, for no reason.  Now, it looks like home improvement will be moving to the back.  Home furnishings filled in the gap where school supplies were, along with some movement of clothing.  Shoes were slightly shoved around as baby care went to where the Subway restaurant once was.  Paper goods now occupy where baby care was.  Pet food, with other pet supplies, took over paper goods' spot.  Health and beauty expanded to where pet supplies were, but not without a sizable reordering of products, so that the aisles have different products together.  Just last week, the seasonal aisles were placed with housewares, for what go better together than small home appliances and Halloween costumes and candy.  Clothing was currently moved into where seasonal was, and it looked liked cards/party supplies were the next to be moved.  Have I mentioned how checkout has changed?  The previous multiple self-checkout lanes have been rearranged into one single location.  Too bad not all of the registers had been connected as of my last visit.  Some of the regular lanes are still being fixed into a meaningful configuration.  Until finalized, paper numbers cover where the original plastic one denoted which was which.  Large gaps still float in the front, but last least that allowed me to see where the collectables aisle had been moved to.  Similar empty spots turn up elsewhere among the departments, just waiting for the latest changes, as well as the changing of the tile.  I'm almost scared of what will happen when the changes start in the grocery aisles.  Already, small changes were made to produce and bakery.  In fact, they were among the first changes I noticed.  That and how the deli doesn't seem to have product displayed, at least at the times I'm there.  For whatever the reason, my store senses reel whenever I go there lately.  I can't seem to keep up with the week-to-week alterations.  I've been in other stores, both during and after major renovations, but I've never felt this confused before.  The changes have been random and chaotic.  Even just passing by the moved sections leave me befuddled.  It shouldn't, but it does.  I recently went to a supermarket that I hadn't been to in over a year.  They had a near complete makeover, but I was able to navigate the aisles with few problems.  But my local Walmart.  It just leaved me wishing that the remodel would finish.  And soon.